“No.” Then, “You will be careful.”
“I must be, but, now that I am this far, I think it will turn out well. I know it will.”
“You don’t want to wait for night.”
She didn’t.
Stubborn. But it had kept her alive, waiting for luck. “At least let me take you past all that on the dock.”
“Alone is better. I will go right by the soldiers, they won’t care, their job is only people who want to leave.”
“Yes, you’re right,” DeHaan said.
They shook hands once more and she left. Halfway down the corridor she turned toward him, walked backward for a step or two, her face closed, without expression, then turned again and walked away.
DeHaan left the ship at 1030, headed for the rua do Comrcio, the office of the customs broker. At the end of the pier, the soldiers made a path for him through the crowd of refugees, shooing people aside, barring their rifles and pushing when they had to. They were not brutal, only doing what they’d been ordered to do, and there was a certain practiced feel to the way they went about it. It took no time at all, his passage, but long enough. Voices called out to him, in this language or that, someone offering a thousand dollars, someone else holding a diamond ring above the heads of the crowd. I can’t take you. Maybe he could, after a battle with the port officers, but he secretly agreed with Kees, that they’d never see longitude six-east, so where he would take them, more than likely, was to the bottom of the sea, or into a German camp.
“Is something wrong?” Penha, the customs broker, asked when he arrived. So, it showed.
DeHaan just shook his head.
Penha was short and dark, well dressed, and very nervous. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “I was here very late, last night.”
“We lost time,” DeHaan said. Their ship’s log instrument-a line run from a gauge in the chartroom into the water that calculated miles gained-had showed them losing way to strong current on the voyage to Lisbon.
“Your cargo is in the shed on the wharf. I’m supposed to let you in, and to give you this.” He had the false manifest on his desk, and gave it to DeHaan immediately, glad to be rid of the thing. “You are not what I expected,” he said.
“What did you expect?”
Penha shrugged. “Buccaneer-of some sort.” He used the French word, boucanier, oddly romantic, the way DeHaan heard it.
“Captain of a Dutch freighter, that’s all.”
Penha lit a cigarette. “This is not what I do, ordinarily.”
“No, I’m sure it isn’t,” DeHaan said. “And a month ago I would’ve said the same thing. And a year ago, my country just went about its life, but everything changed.”
Insufficient reason, from the look on Penha’s face. “This is a business where honor matters-trust, personal trust, is all there is. That is my signature, on that piece of paper in your hand.”
Shall I apologize? Penha was not acting out of conviction, he realized, had apparently been forced to do this. “There’s no plan to show this to anyone, Senhor Penha,” he said. “It’s a form of insurance-and likely will remain a secret.”
“A secret. Are you sure?”
“Yes, I would say I am.”
“Because I’m not so sure.”
After a moment, DeHaan said, “Why not?”
A long silence. Only sounds of the street outside the quiet office as Penha tried to decide what to do, went back and forth-tell, don’t tell-then caution won out. Finally he said, “There are reasons.”
DeHaan gave him time to change his mind, time to say more, but the battle was over. “I should be getting back to my ship,” he said, as he rose to leave.
“You will have to load tonight,” Penha said. “And I’m supposed to be there.” Unless you say otherwise.
“Is nine too early?”
“It will do.”
“I have to sail, as soon as possible.”
“Yes,” Penha said. “You should.”
It was a fifteen-minute walk, back to the pier at the rua do Faro. An unremarkable walk, through the commercial district behind the port, on the way there, but different on the way back. For whatever ailed Penha, DeHaan discovered, turned out to be contagious. For instance, the man idling in front of a shop window on the corner of the rua do Comrcio. Or the couple looking out over the river, who glanced at him as he passed. And, on the street side of the cargo shed, the Peugeot sedan, parked by the road that allowed trucks to drive down the pier. Behind the wheel, a plump, middle-aged man, smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper, spread out across the steering wheel. To DeHaan he seemed particularly content, perfectly at peace with the world, as though this was the best, really the only, way to read a newspaper, parked in one’s car by a cargo shed. As DeHaan came even with the car, the man looked up, stared at DeHaan for a few seconds, then rolled his window down. “Captain DeHaan?”
“Yes?”
The man leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door, then said, “Can you join me for a minute?”
What was this? When DeHaan hesitated, the man added “Please?” Not the polite version of the word, something less. The man put the pipe back in his teeth and waited patiently. Finally, DeHaan went around the front and climbed in the passenger side. Sweetish smoke filled the car, which had a fancy interior, with soft leather seats. “Much appreciated,” the man said. “If I say the name Hallowes-does that help?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“My name is Brown,” the man said. “I’m at the embassy, here in Lisbon.”
“The naval attach office?”
“Mmm, no, not really. But what I do isn’t so different from your friend Hallowes. Same church, different pew, eh?”
“He asked you to speak with me?”
“Oh no, he didn’t do that. But we’re all on the same side, in the end, aren’t we. You understand?”
After a moment, DeHaan nodded.
“Good, best to have that out of the way. Now Captain, I’m here because I have a small problem, and I need your help.”
DeHaan waited. Inside, rising apprehension.
“The, ah, Santa Rosa sails tonight, I believe, for Sweden. Do I have that right?”
“For Malm, yes.”
“Of course, the official version. And very discreet, to put it that way.”
“Mr. Brown, what do you want?” This was blunt and direct and had no effect whatsoever.
“A friend of mine needs passage, up to Sweden. I was hoping you might do me the favor of taking him along.”
“I don’t recall that being in my orders, from the NID.”
“Oh, the NID, ” Brown said, deeply unimpressed. “No, probably it wasn’t. Nonetheless, it’s what I’m asking you to do, and the NID needn’t know about it, if that’s what concerns you. He’s just a meager little man, you won’t even know he’s aboard.”
“And if I say no?”
“Is that what you’re saying? Because I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“Why not,” Brown said, as though to himself. “Have you noticed a Fiat automobile, parked on the pier?”
“Yes, I saw it.”
“Inside the car are two Portuguese men. Plain enough, nothing special about them, except that they are important. Powerful, that’s the better word. They can, for example, impound your ship and intern your crew, but neither of us would want that, would we, what with the war effort and all. You really must go to Sweden, but one extra soul on board will make no difference, certainly there’s room for him.”
